History Main / Planetville

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' is a constant offender in stories set on non-Earth planets, whether they're inhabited by human colonies or native alien cultures.

By extension, if a planet represents a country, an alien race represents an ethnic group, and an empire that spans Earth becomes a multi-planet empire.

Unfortunately, because SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, and making up 200 planets with 200 countries each is hard, stories about Planetville make no sense in reality. Nobody seems to realize how BIG a planet is -- everything in Planetville takes the same amount of time as stories set in towns or countries. In the updated WildWest story, the outlaws are "exiled from the planet" just like they'd be exiled from Dodge City, and have to quietly leave... instead of flat out challenging the authorities to find them when they have an entire ''planet'' on which to hide. When the space Nazis invade, they seem to need the same number of soldiers and time as the Earth Nazis needed to invade Europe. And when the crew of the CoolStarship finds the cure for the alien plague, the logistical issues of distributing it to an entire planet rarely get mentioned at all. These considerations are [[HandWave minimized]] [[EasyLogistics or left out entirely]] in many stories.

A side effect of this is that the characters never realize that things can happen in parts of planets. You will never see aliens trying to capture a planet's equator, or its polar caps -- it's the whole planet or bust.

* PlanetOfHats: It's just like the wacky AdventureTowns of Earth.

* ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers'', being a SpaceWestern of the same era also rocked this Trope: Tortuna was a WretchedHive with a few domed cites that [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Her Travesty]] didn't nuke into ashes. Ozark was an isolated LostColony backwater. Granna and Nebraska were farm worlds. The justification for using the Trope was that large-scale human colonization had only been going on for a decade at most, and sleeper ships only launched about 50 years prior to the series.

** In ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', the Empire finds the Rebel base simply by launching scouting droids at various planets. Sure, it apparently took a few years but that would be an insanely short amount of time for even one planet, to say nothing of an entire galaxy's worth. Keep in mind the scouting droid that eventually finds the base does so after conveniently landing about a mile away. Though extras in the scenes do note that this scout droid strategy is a supreme longshot, and the chances of the droids finding a Rebel base are extremely remote. They only attack the base on Hoth because Vader used the Force to intuit that that droid ''had'' actually succeeded, and not just found a random smuggler's outpost.

** Most planets you personally visit home to only one mission or point of interest, with most of the gameplay taking place within a few square kilometers traversed by an all terrain vehicle. Although these few square kilometers around any settlement always include (as yet) undiscovered crash sites, mineral deposits and so on, which are supposed to be rare in universe. This is usually justified as you exploring new and sparsely-peopled colonies on the frontier, as opposed to the aforementioned well-settled worlds. The colonies threatened by the geth in ''1'', Collectors in ''2'', and Cerberus in ''3'' are all very new and none of have populations of more than a few million (e.g. Eden Prime, Freedom's Progress, Horizon, Noveria, Terra Nova, Benning), so it's perfectly plausible that they'd all be centered around one city. In cases where you ''are'' on a planet with a significant population (e.g. Zorya, Illium, Cyone, Menae), there will usually be flavor text stating that there are obviously more points of interest on the planet, but [[TheLawOfConservationOfDetail Shepard only has objectives in this one area.]]

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' plays this straight but also averts it. In the Codex, it is mentioned that planetary invasions are common. However, thanks to the way colonization works in most cases, there are rarely any planets with more than a dozen settlements, and most of the worlds visited by the player are in the process of being colonized, having only a few hundred inhabitants at most. The exceptions are mainly the species of the galaxy's homeworlds (Earth, Pavalen, Thessia, Sur'Kesh, etc.) However, most planets are home to only one mission or point of interest, with most of the gameplay taking place within a couple square kilometers traversed by an all terrain vehicle. Although these few square kilometers around any settlement always include (as yet) undiscovered crash sites, mineral deposits and so on, which are supposed to be rare in universe.

* ''Comicbook/{{Lucifer}}'': The birth of a new "creation"--explicitly described as a new "multiverse"--seems to consist of approximately one region the size of Europe being made.
** That's just where all the interesting stuff happens (following in daddy's footsteps). Twenty six pages showing the inky blackness of space in order to demonstrate scale does not make for a fun story.

* Jack Vance's science fiction abounds with Planetvilles. Typical is ''Literature/TheDemonPrinces'' series, where, for example, one planet is organized around its publishing industry, being the source of the main magazine found throughout a ''star cluster'' in the manner of a dominant regional town paper. However, such immediacy is central: it is hard to see how it could be written more realistically without spoiling the story and its setting. A redeeming justification is the incredibly sparse nature of settlement, where a planet might only have a single town. Or Smade's World: halfway between Smade Mountains and Smade Ocean lies Smade's tavern. All else is wilderness.
** Completely averted, though, with several worlds that are the settings of entire novels: Tschai, Durdane, Big Planet. These are diverse and rich in detail. Except Pao, whose Planetville nature caused the crisis that gets the plot started.
* Justified also in Dan Simmon's ''Literature/HyperionCantos'' series. Millions of [[PortalNetwork Farcaster]] portals mean that pretty much anywhere on a world (indeed, a couple of hundred worlds) are rarely more than a few steps away. Some ''houses'' are built on multiple planets, with farcasters serving in place of doors. [[SophisticatedAsHell Martin Silenus]] had one; the bathroom is a raft on the [[SingleBiomePlanet ocean planet]] Mare Infinitus.
** Also averted: Most planets are clearly stated to have multiple, distinct locations.

** Mostly averted however, with the Ringworld itself — an artificial ring-shaped structure, surrounding a sun at about the Earth's distance from our sun, which is also 1,000,000 miles or so wide. Let's put it this way... the first ''Ringworld'' novel chronicles a months-long journey by the main characters, across a wildly diverse area of the Ring, from one edge. They only explore about a fifth of the way across ''from that edge'' and back. That's the sort of scale we're dealing with.

** Ibara is almost entirely on a single island, with some action in a city on the mainland. This is mainly because [[spoiler: Ibara is the future of Veelox, when most of the civilized citizens live on the island Ibara]].

* Justified in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'', as all the planets there are colonies of varying sizes, usually initially settled by a cohesive group of people in just one area.
** At least a few planets/moons are shown to have multiple cities, towns, and jurisdictions. When the crew visits Ariel (a Core World), we only see the big city, but its beautiful mountains and wilderness are discussed. Being a thriving Core World, it's very advanced, with cutting-edge 26th-Century culture and technology. The recently-terraformed Rim Colonies, on the other hand, are dirt-poor, sparsely populated, and scrape by with whatever little the pioneer colonists could bring with them, relying on horses for transportation.
* Various ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' series portray Earth as Planetville. Apparently, conquering whatever town the Rangers happen to live in is the key to taking the whole thing.
** Are you sure they're targeting the city to conquer it and not to draw the Rangers in the open to kill them?

** At least for SG-1, they're walking through the gate, which severely limits the amount of the planet that they're capable of exploring. So, while each destination is essentially a "planet", the area of relevance to the SGC is only a few dozen square miles. But the excuse hardly works for their enemies, who are kind enough to place all their facilities within walking distance despite having spaceships and teleporters.
*** The teleporters are limited, and if the only methods of travel you had were by magic doorway, Learjet and massive spaceship you'd probably spend a lot of time walking too, and you'd ensure that said magic doorways were as near to your current resource pile as possible. Further, the Goa'uld are repeatedly noted as discouraging the sort of independent thinking that would involve moving away from the Stargate.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' has entire planets garrisoned by a single regiment of 108 giant robots. Major factory worlds and capitals might get 3 to 5 of them. This is like suggesting you need only one tank division to conquer Earth.

** There's another aspect involved in the numbers used, too : The populace is, in general, rather fatalistic about accepting their fate as serfs in the FeudalFuture setting of ''[=BattleTech=]''.
*** These numbers only hold true for late Succession Wars if even that. Prior to 3028 twelve mechs was considered an huge amount of resources to commit to anything.
*** This and that fact that the Houses don't want to blow up the things they want form the planet resulting in most invasions being just one battle and who ever wins gets the planet.
*** Even with all the above factors taken into account, the people in charge of the setting have admitted that planetary populations are far too high for the levels of military forces used to defend them, but they don't to {{retcon}} either one, since at that point they'd pretty well have to keep retconning until they'd redesigned then entire setting from the ground up.

** Also justified in some locations, such as Holy Terra, which is indeed a planet-wide city.
*** ...with the Emperor's palace complex taking up ''most of Asia''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'' is a major offender: every single planet is a Planetville. Without exception. Pittsburgh, for example, appears to be an entire planet with just one little mining site. And on top of that, planets usually offer the same services as a "tiny little" battleship. This is rather justified due to TheLawOfConservationOfDetail, though, because ''Freelancer'' has hundreds of planets and space stations within its own world.
** Somewhat justified in that you are a freelance trader, you only ever go as far as the single spaceport on each planet. You buy/sell resources in the port, and visit the port bar to get contracts. The rest of the planet is irrelevant to you.
** You don't need to see anything on the planets because nothing happens there. Any planet-side parts of the story are limited to chats in the local bar.
* Justified in ''Franchise/{{Halo}}''. Whenever the Covenant invade a human world, they usually seem to land on only one city/country, ignoring the rest of the planet. However, the only reason the ground assault usually exists is to recover [[{{Precursors}} Forerunner]] artifacts, which are only on whatever part of the planet they land on. Once finished, the Covenant fly back into space and glass the entire planet, assuming they defeated the local SpaceNavy. Which they almost always do, given how much more advanced they are compared to humanity. In ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'', a character specifically notes that the Covenant's Prophet of Truth could've landed his forces anywhere, but specifically chose the area around New Mombasa, Africa.
** They also do ground assaults to destroy the ground-based generators which power the planet's [[KillSat orbital]] [[MagneticWeapons MAC]] [[WaveMotionGun cannons]], which are pretty much the only weapon humans have which can reliably destroy Covenant ships.
* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' plays this straight but also averts it. In the Codex, it is mentioned that planetary invasions are common. However, thanks to the way colonization works in most cases, there are rarely any planets with more than a dozen settlements, and most of the worlds visited by the player are in the process of being colonized, having only a few hundred inhabitants at most. The exceptions are mainly the species of the galaxy's homeworlds (Earth, Pavalen, Thessia, Sur'Kesh, etc.) However, most planets are home to only one mission or point of interest, with most of the gameplay taking place within a couple square kilometers traversed by an all terrain vehicle.
** Although these few square kilometers around any settlement always include (as yet) undiscovered crash sites, mineral deposits and so on, which are supposed to be rare in universe.

* In ''[[Anime/MashinHeroWataruSeries Wataru 2]]'', Wataru was sent across the universe to Soukaizan's neighboring planet, a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dipper Dipper]]-like [[Main/{{Constellations}} constellation]] planet named "Seikaizan (''Stellar Realm Mountain'')" to take out the army lead by Doakudar's younger brother, Dowarudar. The seven "stars" of Seikaizan are provinces, therefore Wataru's gang has to travel across space to reach the next province; usually via a [[EverythingsBetterWithRainbows rainbow bridge]].

Unfortunately, because SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, and making up 200 planets with 200 countries each is hard, stories about Planetville make no sense. Nobody seems to realize how BIG a planet is[[note]]Despite, you know, ''living on one''.[[/note]] -- everything in Planetville takes the same amount of time as stories set in towns or countries. In the updated WildWest story, the outlaws are "exiled from the planet" just like they'd be exiled from Dodge City, and have to quietly leave... instead of flat out challenging the authorities to find them when they have an entire ''planet'' in which to hide. When the space Nazis invade, they seem to need the same number of soldiers and time as the Earth Nazis needed to invade Europe. And when the crew of the CoolStarship finds the cure for the alien plague, the logistical issues of distributing it to an entire planet rarely get mentioned at all. These considerations are [[HandWave minimized]] [[EasyLogistics or left out entirely]] in many stories.

Sometimes a result of the LawOfConservationOfDetail in universes with dozens or hundreds of planets/star systems. The "planet with one small settlement" subtrope can be justified in stories about human colonisation of planets with no native sentients, because it's plausible that colonies wouldn't leap from a couple of spaceships full of initial settlers to occupying the entire planet in a few short years.

* The {{Creator/Filmation}} series ''WesternAnimation/{{Bravestarr}}'' is a major offender in this regard. It features New Texas, an entire futuristic western-styled planet with exactly one -1!- village-sized settling by the name of Fort Kerium. Especially mind-blogging considering that the planet is said to be rich with the rare and valuable element Kerium.

** Another episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zagged]] this trope beautifully in its teaser scene, where Worf, Data and Dr. Crusher are sitting in a cafe on a planet-of-the-week that is experiencing domestic terrorism because of a conflict between the planetary government and a minority separatist group. The Ansata [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters rebels/terrorists]] detonate a bomb near the cafe, and several civilians are injured. Dr. Crusher leaps into the fray to provide medical aid, with Worf and Data urging her to be more cautious. It's a great character moment for Beverly Crusher. While Crusher is tending to the wounded, Data invokes this trope by telling her that "It would be prudent to return to the ship" and then states "This planet has its own physicians." Dr. Crusher, seemingly aware of the absurdity of this trope, simply replies, "They're not ''here''. I ''am''," and continues doctoring.

* Justified with Yellowstone in the ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries''. The planet is described as being somewhere between Mars and Titan; i.e. a DeathWorld, bar its capitol, Chasm City, which is a [[DomedHometown massive domed city]] covering a volcanic vent that spews out breathable air. Outside of a few scientific and industrial towns, the rest of the planet is unpopulated; if something is on Yellowstone, it's in Chasm City. Yellowstone's Glitter Belt - a ring of hundreds of orbiting space stations featured primarily in ''Literature/ThePrefect'' - however, has extremely diverse cultures, ranging from voluntary dictatorships to BrainInAJar virtual realities. Sky's Edge was colonized by multiple GenerationShips that broke out into war shortly after landing, and has at least three warring nations with unique cultures descended from their generation ship's source culture/population.

*** ...with the Emperor's palace complex taking up ''most of Europe''.

* ''Anime/StarTwinklePrettyCure Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure'' takes this approach to their space travel theme, as their standard twenty minute episode length and [[OncePerEpisode requisite battle]] doesn't allow for much world-building. One of the planets they head to, Planet Zeni, is outside of the regulations of the [[TheFederation Starry Sky Galaxy Association]] and is stated to be the home of a lawless metropolis with a high population-density and money as the end-all be-all. Which is the extent of what we learn about Zeni.

** Well arguably, if your tank is a ''bolo'', you wouldn't even need a whole tank division. A ''single'' bolo would do the job in fact. But, that's crossing the streams.
*** It's also been remarked upon that many worlds only really have two strategically significant features: The Spaceport and the [[SubspaceAnsible HPG Generator]]. Only a very few exceptionally wealthy and populous worlds have more than one of each of these, and they're invariably located in close proximity to the largest and most important (sometimes [[LandOfOneCity only]]) city on the planet and probably the seat of government as well: Once they're under the control of the attacking forces, the remaining defenders are cut off from their supply lines and will eventually run out of fuel and munitions. Similarly, the slow, limited nature of space travel in the setting means that it's difficult to transport a force greater than a couple of regiments in strength with any amount of haste.

Unfortunately, because SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, stories about Planetville make no sense. Nobody seems to realize how BIG a planet is[[note]]Despite, you know, ''living on one''.[[/note]] -- everything in Planetville takes the same amount of time as stories set in towns or countries. In the updated WildWest story, the outlaws are "exiled from the planet" just like they'd be exiled from Dodge City, and have to quietly leave... instead of flat out challenging the authorities to find them when they have an entire ''planet'' in which to hide. When the space Nazis invade, they seem to need the same number of soldiers and time as the Earth Nazis needed to invade Europe. And when the crew of the CoolStarship finds the cure for the alien plague, the logistical issues of distributing it to an entire planet rarely get mentioned at all. These considerations are [[HandWave minimized]] [[EasyLogistics or left out entirely]] in many stories.

** During the invasion of Kamino, General Grievous boasted that Kamino had fallen. This is despite much of his fleet getting shot down in orbit without doing similar damage to the Republic fleet, and his crashed troop transports (which was part of the plan) only really managing to get a foothold in Tipoca City. Grievous might have simply been trying to psyche out Kenobi though.

* Played straight in ''Earthsearch''. When they finally discover Earth at the end of season 2, the planet has been devastated by war and environmental change, so the entire planetary population consists of a single town of ten thousand inhabitants.

** The tradition continues in ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', when Finn repeatedly insists it's a bad idea to go back to Jakku because he's sure the First Order will find them there, never mind that Jakku is, you know, a ''planet''. It would, however, be perfectly sensible to have such fears about returning to a small town.

*** It's also been remarked upon that many worlds only really have two strategically significant features: The Spaceport and the [[SubspaceAnsible HPG Generator]]. If both of these are under your control the planet is effectively yours, since no-one can leave and no-one can get a message off of the planet. If both attacker and defender think like this, the numbers deployed starts to fall as there is less need for grand, planet encompassing strategies when only 2 points will ever need attacking or defending. Similarly, the slow, limited nature of space travel in the setting means that it's difficult to transport a force that exceeds more than a regiment or two in size with any amount of haste.

* OneWorldOrder: A country has one government except in civil wars. Planetville has only one except in civil wars (they may or may not be ScaryDogmaticAliens).

* Played straight in ''Literature/TheLostFleet'', in which a hundred million people is considered quite a significant population for an entire ColonisedSolarSystem, but justified by deep cultural hang-ups about the dangers of overpopulation that came scarily close to wiping humanity out completely before the first off-world colonies were founded. Apparently even [[OneNationUnderCopyright the Syndicate Worlds]] haven't completely abandoned such considerations in the name of greed.

** Veelox all takes place within one city. Justfied, since most of the population is inside virtual reality.

* Avoided in regards to Earth in Harry Turtledove's ''Literature/WorldWar'' series - the difference in national identities confuses the Lizards, as does the human propensity to keep fighting even after the capitals and major cities have been subjugated. The tropes is in full effect on the Lizards' homeworld, however, and to some extent justified in that it is (mostly) a SingleBiomePlanet that has had a single, united monarchy for millenia.

-->--'''Richard Hell and the Voidoids''', "The Kid With the Replaceable Head"